Manhattan Trailer Promises Explosive Drama From Series About The Manhattan Project

By David Wharton | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

WGN America’s Manhattan is set in Los Alamos, New Mexico in the midst of the race to build the world’s first atomic bomb. The story focuses on two different families — Charlie and Abby Isaacs (Ashley Zukerman and Rachel Broshnahan) and Frank and Liza Winter (John Benjamin Hickey and Olivia Williams) — through whose eyes we experience 1940s Los Alamos and the “mysterious mission” at the heart of the town. Brian Dollenmayer, EVP of marketing and promotions at WGN America and Tribune Studios, makes inevitable Mad Men comparisons and says Manhattan is “a drama that tries to capture the emotional truth of these people who lived and worked there. It’s really the story beyond the bomb.”

While this looks like it could swing too far into the melodramatic, I’m definitely intrigued. The show was created by a guy named Sam Shaw, whose primary earlier credit is penning a few episodes of Showtime’s Masters of Sex. So he doesn’t have a huge resume to judge him by, but Masters of Sex is a pretty great show, and his experiences there should be able to carry over into Manhattan I would think — it’s a period show centered around a compelling and controversial subject that lends itself to putting the emotional screws to its characters. And hey, maybe they’ll throw a huge twist into the season finale and introduce Dr. Manhattan. (File that under “Things I Would Do If I Were A Multi-Billionaire Media Mogul.”)

However, my very favorite thing about Manhattan right now is the brilliant “faux propaganda” marketing campaign, which includes some genuinely stunning posters that you can check out below. Manhattan will premiere Sunday, July 27 at 9/8c on WGN America. Just don’t tell anybody, because the enemy is listening…